Thursday, 13-June-2024
When I first caught sight of Riga from the bus, I saw the TV tower.
A massive three-legged down, stretching up into the sky from a wooded island in the river, it was a beacon for the city – I don’t know if it’s the tallest building in Riga, but I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it was. The tower’s huge, solid, and visible from pretty much anywhere on the river.
Which clearly meant that I had to go stand near it. I mean… obviously. I’m only human.
On Thursday, I headed out.
I grabbed an electric scooter, pulled up a map on my phone, and made my way to the lovely wooded island where I planned on taking a nice day out of the city. Spend some time in nature, appreciate some trees, touch grass, and get different views of a huge TV tower… you know, the usual adventures.
As I got closer to the tower, though, my intuition started giving me some feedback about that plan.
Specifically, that this area wasn’t a nature preserve… and this was a bit closer to those parks in Portland where people connected to the grid probably shouldn’t go. It wasn’t any one specific thing that was tipping off my subconscious (and conscious) alarms, but the whole general feeling of the place. I pressed on a bit, but after maybe 15min on the island my mind hit a saturation point.
Discretion is the better part of valor, and caution never goes out of style. I turned around, and headed back to the safety of the city.
My scooter died on me a bit of the way into Riga proper. Not quite the old town, but a far bit closer into the city than I was before… and an area that wasn’t triggering any alarm bells in my mind. It was actually a quite interesting portion of the city – only two miles from my hotel, but much more residential of a feel, with small bodega-style shops and quite a few commuters going to and fro.
It was… a little sad, in some spots, seeing all the older buildings and boarded up windows. It seems like I’d found myself in a portion of Riga that wasn’t thriving as well as the city center was, with quite a few pensioners and grandparents shuffling along the sidewalks with their grocery carts. It didn’t feel bad, though, and I appreciated the opportunity to see this side of the city.
As part of seeing that side of the city, I was fortunate enough to witness something I’d really only ever read about, or seen in old TV shows – Babushka’s gossiping from their balconies!
Literally – As I was walking by, I heard the sound of quiet-yelling voices coming from one of the buildings… looked over, and saw a whole gaggle of people (all in their own apartments, of course) leaning out of windows and over balconies, talking what I assumed to be neighborhood gossip. Maybe a dozen over all, ranging from younger ladies with babies to full-on Latvian grandmas. It was fun to see a scene so straight out of a book… and I continued on with a slightly bigger smile on my face than before.
